The More You Know: 5 Tips for Understanding Your Audience

Once you’ve crafted the perfect presentation the real work begins. Now you’ve got to learn the thing!  But even after you’ve put in long hours working out your slides and your content, you’ve only just started. You can discover some new gestures and consider taking your pitch to the edge of the stage and back, but you’ve still barely begun. You may spend hours memorizing exactly how to say every single word with perfect pronunciation, but you still have such a long way to go.

What we are talking about here is knowing your audience. In a sense – no matter how hard you work – you can’t even begin to prepare for real until you have some notion of who you are preparing for.

As we’ve all seen time and time again, a Generation Y audience is fundamentally different from a roomful of Baby Boomers. What if you prepare to talk to a group of entrepreneurial Marines and end up addressing the local branch of the Delta Delta Delta Sorority?

In some of these cases you will need to reach – and quickly – for your Plan B and hope that your ability to think – and speak – on your feet will get you through. Although there are some circumstances you can’t prepare for, most of the time, spending some energy discerning just who your audience will be is time very well spent for any presenter.

Here are five things to keep in mind the next time you are getting a handle on the audience of your presentation.

Who and How Many

These simple questions will greatly increase your ability to tailor your presentation to a given audience. Let’s say you are presenting to a group of 150 Girl Scout leaders. How much information can you already fill in just knowing those two simple facts?

What do they Know

Again, one simple question will fill in the broad strokes of any presentation in no time. Are you speaking to a roomful of novices or experts? Are they generalists or specialists? If you know what your audience knows ahead of time you can tailor any PowerPoint presentation to reveal new information, packed full of surprises!

Demographics Make for Great Tactics

A deeper understanding of your audience’s demographic range can be invaluable for focusing your presentation. If you can’t find a plethora of information, even one clue can fill in a lot of blanks. Is your audience blue, white or green collar? What else can that one point of information tell you?

Feed the Need

What is your audience seeking from your presentation? What are you seeking from them? Don’t forget, a presentation is a two-way street. Determine the best way to satisfy each party’s mutual needs and you are well on your way to a great presentation.

Be an Environmentalist

Familiarizing yourself with the environment you’ll be speaking in can be a great way to lay out your presentation strategy and calm your nerves. It can help to talk with peers who’ve already spoken to the same audience or in the same space, and its always a great idea to get to your venue early, set up, mingle and get a feel for the space before you talk.

Good luck!

 

 

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